If you don’t have a computer around, or a pda, the next best thing is the Ti-89 graphing calculator manufactured by Texas Instruments. I bought my Ti-89 at Target for about $130 during September of 2002. It was worth the investment. The Ti-89 can do just about anything! There is the built in programming language, the Ti-GCC C language, and ASM programming support on it’s processor. It has voliate and flash memory built in (around 700kb total though) for storing things and support for transferring files from one calculator to another or to and from your computer.
The best thing about this calculator is it’s program support. Ti Calc is a program archive site for the Ti=89. There are programs written for everything! You can read e-books on the Ti-89, play chess, play 3d shooters, zelda, final fantasy, super mario (nintendo and game boy), breakout, pac man, asteriods, and just about anything you can think of. It can even play sounds (through headphones). Damn, it’s just so awesome. There is even a matrix screen saver for it! If there is ever a calculator to get, it has to be the Ti-89 hands down. Humanity wouldn’t survive without it.
The picture to the top is a scan of my own Ti-89. It’s a hardware version 2 with AMS 2.07 currently loaded. I had 2.08, but it had bad support of many applications, so I downgraded. On the screen is TICT’s ebook reader with Aleph1’s Smashing the Stack. I created an ebook of Smashing the Stack so I could read it in school.
5 Comments
greetings
i have my new ti-89titanium given by my aunt as a present as of know i’m learning how to program manually but i want also to learn how to make ASM, TI-GCC
i’m a civil engineer here in the philippines and don’t enough experience on programming but i’m willing to learn to the best that i can. but my problem is there’s a difficulty of finding resources/ learning tools for texas instruments, would you be so kind if you could give me some titles of books&authors of a good resources soo that i could send a letter to my aunt in CHICAGO IL if you don’t mind with the store where she could buy also i would really appreciate your generous help
thanks
michael
Hi Mike,
Sorry for getting back to you late. I’m not sure if there are any books for learning TI ASM or GCC programming. Almost all of the resources I’ve found were online, and they are great resources too!
Here are a few sites you might want to look at:
http://www.ticalc.org/
http://tict.ticalc.org/
Also, try running a general Google search for ‘ti 89 asm tutorial’ or ‘ti 89 gcc tutorial’, and I’m sure you’ll find many results.
Good luck!
Does TI 89 work with computers
I have just bought a graph link for my TI 89. I would like to use the computer keyboard and mouse to do what I would have used my fingers to do on the calculator. I would like to program, enter expressions and solve equations. What I am able to do now is to enter scalar,vector and matrix variables. Can I get more out of the calculator-computer interface?
Is it possible to take the cover of some other TI graphing calculator and place it on a TI-89 so to make it look like an…ohhh lets say a ti-82 or ti 84 or something. This way it can be used for all exams and it looks like a less powerful calculator but under the skin lays an actuel ti-89.
Joe, possible, there are many skin customizations for it.
Kwaku, there is a ti 89 emulator you could use for that.
Ti-89s are pretty powerful. You can do a lot with it, and its not even a PDA.